"Even my return key
is depressed."


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BobSward's Writer's Friendship Series

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Issue 8: The Lily

Issue7: Passages

Issue6: No More Tears



Aquick list to poets featured in this issue:

Valarie Duff

Nick Flynn

Jim Behrle

Fred Marchant

Jacob Strautmann

Vera Kroms

Henry Israeli

Daniel Gutstein

Joyelle McSweeney

David Dodd Lee

Daniel Bosch

Michael Perrow

Luljeta Lleshanaku

Miklós Radnóti

Nikolai Baitov

Drago Stambuk

Zafer Senocak

Daniel Bosch

Nocturnal Transmission with Imagery as Attachment

(after Larkin)

I keep sending: I can't believe
          You really didn't love me,
But I don't believe it.
          I do believe. I was alone
In love. And now, alone, I grieve it.

Even my return key is depressed.
          I miss you. But I miss my doubt
More fiercely: Doubt made love possible.
          Doubtless I loved you, but, conversely,
I cannot doubt my love was misaddressed.

The system's mailer-daemon can admit
          It's ignorant, so who am I not to?
I don't know you. I never did,
          Or when I did, I didn't want to.
The Internet just sped up all this shit.

My programming makes it so damn
          Easy: it's as if it knows
I'll keep forming these attachments--
          That I'll point and I'll click and I'll
Virtually believe, especially at 3 a.m.

It's a kind of faith, a way of slowing down
          The accelerated pace of modern
Love--the dubious consumer consumed
          By keystrokes like "shift" and "control"
And the dim afterglow which love presumes.

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